


Ships in the Night

by SLWalker



Series: Midnight Blue [8]
Category: Midnight Blue - Fandom, due South
Genre: Curling, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:37:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1993: Mike's curling with his rink; who else happens to be there?  Why, Turnbull and his rink!  Miscreants and Mounties, oh my!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ships in the Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sossity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sossity/gifts).



> ...and with love to Kalijean, who helped write it and kept me from getting blocked.

_"Fuck!"_

The whipcrack noise cut through the air, managing to drown out the roaring of the stone down the sheet, arriving even through the glass in the viewing area and not particularly surprising the two Mounties watching. There were several dozen people at the Evergreen, the sheets were all taken up, and yet only one person could possibly be yelling that. Because only one person managed to turn curling into a contact sport that required semi-frequent _arrest_.

Mike knew. He was usually the arresting officer.

"I dunno how they haven't barred him for life," he said, leaning more of his weight on his broom handle than strictly necessary. He watched as Longfellow snarled at his own stone, then stalked back. Watched as the other rinks all cast him annoyed glances. Watched as Laurent shrugged it off, Turnbull looked even more moody and uncomfortable and their skip just looked _depressed_.

"It's a mystery," Sandy answered, leaned back in his chair. If Mike was the usual arresting officer, then Sandy was the usual witness to this kind of thing. The upside of working days: Sandy got to do league play. On days where Mike missed curling more seriously, instead of just being a substitute, he would threaten to switch shifts. Mostly because Sandy had enough good grace to pretend to look aghast at the thought of having to work afternoons, even though he knew the threat would never be carried through.

"It's like watching a comedy quartet," Mike said, yawning.

"Three Miscreants and a Mountie, coming to a club near you." Sandy elbowed over, and Mike made a face at him. "You're stoned, Chase."

"I'm not _stoned_."

Sandy raised an eyebrow.

"I'm _medicated_. Not stoned."

The eyebrow went higher.

"Shuddup," Mike muttered, then shook his head and tried to look alert. Admittedly, it was a pretty pathetic attempt. The inadvisable cocktail of cough medicine and painkillers kept him from hacking his head off or being too sore to curl their first game, but it was doing a heck of a number on him now while they waited for their second game. The downside of working afternoons: It was curl on your days off or not curl at all. Heck if Mike was going to let a cold deprive him.

"Someone's skip's in the shithouse," del Toro said, sitting down on the other side of Sandy and holding the steaming cup of coffee across Sandy's lap to offer Mike.

Mike tried not to feel too gratified by the way Sandy pressed back in his chair with a vague look of alarm. He took the cup, blinking a few times at del Toro, trying to catch up in his mind to who's skip that was. Then he blinked at the ice. "Longfellow's not a skip," he said, half-absently, looking back in time to see Sandy grip the arm rests of his chair, watching that cup of coffee over his lap like he would a poisonous snake.

"No, the dark-haired guy is. Johnson, I think."

"Corp!" Sandy said, a note of desperation creeping into his voice.

Mike finally turned back to properly sit in his own seat, removing the hovering threat of steaming hot coffee meeting delicate body parts, and watched that rink. They were in their third end, and already behind. Not hopelessly so, though. Mike hadn't gotten to seriously watch them before; he knew Turnbull curled, when he wasn't working, and he knew that Laurent and the other guy -- Johnson -- rotated around to other rinks as well, and that no one outside of that strange group would curl with Longfellow. But he had never really gotten to see them curl as a group. "Wonder why," he said, belatedly, sipping carefully on the coffee. He hadn't noticed anything. But then again, he was kind of medicated; he had meant to watch and ended up staring at a smudge on the viewing glass for a good several minutes until del Toro went to get him coffee.

"Hell if I know," del Toro answered, watching. 

Johnson leaned over to give some kind of instruction to Turnbull, and they all watched while the air seemed to get sucked out of the world between them. The look the guy got back shut him up mid-sentence, a fact that was visible even across a room, and Johnson shrank back to the house with what wanted to be a defiant look when it grew up.

del Toro whistled. Until that point Mike hadn't even been all that sure the look wasn't a hallucination.

"You never mentioned your rook could curl hair at ten paces."

"He's a _Mountie_ , Ricky, of course he can." Admittedly, Mike had never really seen Turnbull doing that to anyone _off-duty_. Then again, he barely ever saw Turnbull off-duty anyway. He didn't think whatever it was that had his rook in low spirits of late was _curling_ , though. Maybe Johnson just said something particularly crude or stupid. Turnbull didn't have the kind of personality that would lead him to lash out at innocents. "Send your hose jockeys over to the detachment, I'll give 'em lessons," Mike added, as half an afterthought.

del Toro scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest, leaving his broom resting against the glass. "Shame those looks didn't work last time we played hockey, Chase."

Mike made a face back, though he was still half-watching the Miscreant-Mountie rink down there. Turnbull had good form for his age; he was using a no-lift delivery right now, looking intently down the ice as he pushed out of the hack. Laurent, despite being the most miscreant of the miscreants -- at least Longfellow was a straight- forward lunatic -- had been whispering to him before he took position himself to sweep. Johnson was calling the orders; Longfellow was calling back the weight.

The rock winged off one the other team's, knocking it out of play, and slid just far enough into the house to score. If they could keep it past the hammer. It was a good shot.

Turnbull went back to throw his second, looking grim.

"What's the point of curling if you're not having _fun_?" Mike asked, before he had the sense to stop himself. "They look like a group of undertakers down there."

"Pressure valve?" Sandy threw out there.

"Longfellow? Then what's poor Marv's bar?"

"Pressure _cooker_? I don't know."

"Few potatoes shy of a stew."

Sandy snorted, and that eyebrow came back to judge Mike's state of mind again.

Mike rolled his eyes, theatrically, then looked back down to watch Turnbull throw his second rock. This one made it nearly to the button. Turnbull still looked thoroughly grim.

"Maybe I should go talk to him."

Sandy started clucking, quietly.

"Oh, come on. He looks miserable!"

Sandy clucked louder.

Mike held his coffee cup over Sandy's lap, eyes narrowed.

"You wouldn't."

"I would."

Sandy looked back at him for a long moment, then apparently decided to he didn't want to test Mike's resolve and quit. Mike got up, wincing a little bit, and trying to shake off the fuzz in his head long enough to not look _medicated_ , passing his coffee off to Sandy to hold. Okay, yeah, maybe it was a little bit mother hen of him, but he couldn't see any real reason not to go down there and offer some kind of... something. Encouragement, or something.

He stood off to the side while they finished the end; the other team made poor use of having the last rocks, and Turnbull managed to bring his team further out of the hole they were in. As they went to start the next end, he gathered his brain power and headed over that way.

"Yeah! You see that? We're going to _own you_!" Longfellow was saying to the other team, who looked more than a little disgruntled. Mike wondered how many games were won because the other team forfeited just to avoid him.

"Drew, please," Turnbull said, mostly through his teeth.

"Knock it off." Mike didn't wait until he was all the way over there, before snapping that at Longfellow. Who had a moment where his eyes went wide in almost comedic startle, before he narrowed them and muttered something that was no doubt profanity-filled and insulting.

"Sir." Turnbull also went kind of wide-eyed, which was the first time that Mike could remember there being a not grim expression on his face so far this evening. "I... I hadn't realized you were here."

"Waiting for our second game," Mike answered, and held up a 'one minute' finger to the other team. They nodded, looking kind of grateful, maybe because someone had shut Longfellow up for a few seconds. Then he looked back at Turnbull and... utterly blanked on what he could possibly say. _Uh..._

Turnbull was apparently no more sure himself about it, and they stood awkwardly for about five seconds too long. Mike could practically hear Sandy up there laughing at him, and pressed his mouth into a line, deciding to just forge ahead and try not to sound like an idiot. On duty, it was easy; off-duty, he felt like he was stepping his foot somewhere he had absolutely no right to be. "You were doing well," he finally said, and decided that yes, he was an idiot. A mother-henning idiot.

Somehow, by some miracle, Turnbull actually smiled a little. Tiny, and sheepish. "Thank you, sir. Best of luck with your next game."

"Best of luck with the rest of yours," Mike answered, relieved that awkward hadn't ruined the attempt, anyway. He held his broom up and pointed it at Longfellow. "You! One more disruption like that, and I'll follow you around town so closely that you'll feel my cruiser's radiator on your rear for a _week_!"

Longfellow sneered back, but he didn't say anything.

Okay. So, that didn't go as badly as Mike thought it would. He caught a glimpse of a ducked-head smile off of Turnbull in his peripheral vision, and then grinned to himself as he went back up to join his rink again.

 

Their second game started before Turnbull's first game ended, and Mike didn't take his focus away from what he was doing long enough to see how that one played out, even if he was glad to only hear disgruntled mumbling from Longfellow's general direction. Curling was a precision sport even when you were in possession of all of your mental prowess; doped up on cold meds, it became quite a challenge not to end up face first on the sheet. Even so, they played five ends before that happened and were ahead by two.

Mike rubbed the bottom of the stone, cleaning it off, then looked up at del Toro in the house; Sandy and Chad were set to sweep, and Mike took a centering breath, kicking back at the buzz in his mind and the lingering drowse to focus. Then he got his foot in the hack, opting for a no-lift delivery, focusing almost all of his being on where del Toro's broom was aiming him.

Almost all. Just before he pushed out of the hack, something caught his (admittedly very medicated) attention. 

Behind his skip by the back wall, there was Laurent with his glasses down the bridge of his nose.

Laurent saluted, grinning in a very disturbed manner, and _winked_.

_What._

The next thing Mike knew was a flash of light and _ow_.

It took a few moments before his brain crawled back dazedly from wherever it had been knocked. Even with a slightly ringing skull, the first thing he asked when the other three came skidding up was, "Did you see...?"

"You wipe out? Yeah, Mike, we saw." del Toro reached down and caught his wrist; between the three of them, they managed to get Mike on his feet without all ending up on the sheet.

Mike blinked hard a few times to get his head and vision together on the same page and leaned back slightly -- gingerly -- to look down to where Laurent had been. But the King Miscreant of Miscreants was gone like he'd never been there, leaving the Mountie to wonder what the heck that was, and try to shake off the sheer, creeping _surreality_ of that expression.

Sandy had that eyebrow up again. del Toro looked about ready to pack Mike off back home to sleep it off. Chad just looked like the baby-faced firefighter he was, eager to get back to the game.

Mike swiped a forearm across his eyes, looked once more, then gave a little shudder. "Nevermind."

 

 

The next morning, bright and early, Sandy stood in front of Mark Johnson's car and eyed the purple marital aid shoved in the hole where the hood ornament had been, and the word 'DICK' carved into the hood with what had to be a key. Thought about a lot of things in that moment. Turnbull's demeanor the night before. The sort of nasty smirk Johnson had given the oblivious Mike, who was mother-henning his rook awkwardly at the time. Laurent's raised eyebrow at that smirk, and the cold, private smile that crossed his face immediately after.

Of course, Sandy didn't speculate much, but he also knew vigilante justice when he saw it.

He turned to the miserable, upset looking Johnson and said, "I'll take the report."

But Sandy, naturally, knew this case wouldn't be solved.


End file.
